Highways Into Space: A first-hand account of the beginnings of the human space program (4 page)

GLYNN AT 14

The Prep had a very strong influence on me and I have a hard time explaining it to myself. I just know that it did. During my space career, I often found that I was aware that I was thinking through a problem in a way different from my colleagues around me. Not necessarily better, just different. My brother Bill went to Prep three years after me, and we have had current discussions about what we got from the Prep. Bill had the very same sense as I that it shaped him for life. And he had the same difficulty in justifying that judgment, but he knew it was so.

The teachers at Prep were a major change from the nuns. They were young men of college graduate age, some of whom had high school careers in football and other sports. They were smart, strong and athletic. They tolerated no out-of-line behavior and were physical about it. They were in training to become priests and we called them Mister Haske, Coll, Long, et cetera. It was hard to forget that they selected themselves to serve a higher purpose – certainly impressive men. They pounded Latin, Greek, German, philosophy, logic, math and ethics into our heads and reinforced the subjects with a regular regimen of two to three hours of homework every night. The Jesuits prided themselves on providing a “classical education” and preparing young men for the priesthood or to become “Catholic gentlemen.”

Great as it was, there still was the matter of tuition. And that brings me to another unexplained chain of events. Dad was in a new job by this time and it could not have paid as well as the mines. But he did get started on a new path that was eventually better for him and Mom, and certainly safer than the mines. But there had to be less income for tuition. I wonder now if my folks talked to the Prep authorities about taking me out of school. And, if so, they were probably told to wait while other options were pursued. Here I am in my junior year, having just turned fifteen in November. During the next month, I found myself with a job opportunity perfectly fitted to my situation. The job was at the Diocesan Guild Studios, on the other end of the block from school. The store sold various kinds of religious articles to churches and individuals and was certainly tied into the organization of the Church and its workings. The job was close, part-time and somehow that opportunity found me out of all the other possible candidates when I was not even actively pursuing a job. Tuition problem solved. Fifty cents per hour. Was all that a coincidence? Again, nobody said anything by way of explanation to me. But from the perspective of sixty years later, no, it was not a coincidence. Somebody became aware of the problem and fixed it.

Part-time was about fifteen to twenty hours per week and full-time in the summer. I worked as a stock clerk, with the stock room being on the second floor. So, the stock team had to get everything up there, unpack and store it and bring it back down for sale. I was the only part timer in the store and at least five years younger than the next in age. Again, it was a stretch for me in many ways and fifty cents per hour became a lesson in earning money and seeing how far it might go. At one point, it was a shock to hear (unsubstantiated) that the boss, Mr. Maher, made $10,000 per year, an unimaginable sum. At my rate, I had a long way to go. I kept the job at full-time in the summer and back to part-time during my school term at the University of Scranton for my first two years of college studies. By the time I left, I was up to eighty-five cents per hour.

As another indicator of my standing in the social sphere and when it came time for this 16-year-old to get a date for the senior prom, I actually did not know any girls of suitable qualifications. I had some cousins, but that did not count. Eventually, one of the women at the Guild Studios arranged the date with her younger sister. And it worked out, but was an indicator that I had some growing up to do.

GLYNN’S HIGH SCHOOL GRADUATION

PLUS BILL, JERRY AND CAROL

In my senior year at Prep, I also began to focus on the pursuit of a college degree. I was pretty good at math and loved making model airplanes. I thought my choice was between accounting and engineering. My parents suggested that I talk to our local Doctor Marmo. He had been a long time doctor for our family who made house calls. He was only one of two people that we knew with a college degree. He listened patiently while I described my choices and he said, “Glynn, go for the engineering.” It was a simple, short conversation and set my course for life. Thanks, Dr. Marmo, and God bless your beloved Nittany Lions.

After graduation from the Prep, I knew I wanted to work on airplanes and the path became apparent. Two years were at the University of Scranton because it was so convenient and I could live at home. The University of Detroit offered an aeronautical B.S. through a co-op program. And, since it was also a Jesuit university like the one in Scranton, all my credits would transfer with a minimum of do-overs.

During my last summer at home in 1955, I had a state highway job near home before heading off to the University of Detroit for three years of their co-op aeronautical engineering program. Looking back, I really don’t know how I was offered that Prep scholarship. Somebody intervened and my guess is that it was a significant somebody from Prep. Likewise, how did the part time job at the Guild Studios come my way? Maybe someday, I will hear the whole story. I hope so.

On that path in 1953, I found myself repeating my early experience at Prep. I was sixteen and had filled out to a robust one hundred twenty pounds. This time, half of my class was comprised of Korean war vets back to get their degree. I was five to six years behind these guys and much more than that in terms of maturity. But, my study habits were current and sharp, so I had something valuable to offer. Many of them sought me out and I earned a place on the class roster.

There was another student from Old Forge in this pre-engineering class and his name was Tony Andreoni. Tony had a 1937 Chevy, which ran at least those two years at the University of Scranton and probably well beyond. We became close friends and did a lot of miles together. Tony had a year of chemistry in high school and I had none at Prep. College started in at least the second year of chemistry and Tony saved me. Our routine was something like this – Glynn worked until 5 to 6 p.m. at the Guild, went home, did homework for three hours while eating and then we were off to meet our other classmates for an evening of shuffleboard, the shells and lots of laughs. My peers were a college degree in themselves and it was a grand time for two years. We went to class in old barracks buildings, which the University used to handle the surge in attendance after Korea. They were comfortable and did the job. This was the precursor to another lesson from my work in the space program. We had engineers from many schools and states but not the “name” universities, and the young men did everything asked of them and more. This profession, as many others I would guess, is a matter of sound preparation, attitude and work ethic, not a school address.

Back to the family, we just absorbed the daily lessons of family and friends and took it as standard. Folks stopped by regularly for a visit or a glass of beer. Uncle Steve walked all of Old Forge every day on his regular daily visit to family and some of his friends, even if he only stayed ten minutes. Mom took on caretaker duties for my grandfather and both grandmothers as live-ins at various times. When our folks decided to tear down the old house on River Street and build a new one in 1968 after we had all left home, their cousins (Dot and Bernie Ostroski) immediately invited Mom and Dad to live with them for the construction duration in their home in Pittston. Our parents cemented their relationship with the three Ostroski kids that carried on the rest of their lives. Such was the way of family in the Lackawanna valley.

Relatively unspoken but pervasive at that time and in that place was the sense of patriotism for our country. It was very visible during the war years when so many went off to serve the country and the wives and mothers were left at home to care for the families. We did not have a lot of factories in the area where women went to work as in California in the aircraft factories, but there was plenty to do on the home front and women did it. And we never heard a complaint about it. Perhaps the last value that our parents worked hard to instill in us was something that I would call ambition. This was not the crass, self-involved ambition but rather a more noble desire for her children to be able to live a better life. In our family, even though I was going to a very difficult high-performance high school, the standard always was that you will learn; you will get an education and you will make something of yourself. It was considered mandatory that we do that and that we never even consider working in the mines.

Christmas Eve, 1950. The men working in the Pagnotti coal mine in Pittston, Pennsylvania, were beginning to think about enjoying Christmas Day with their families and friends. And then, “Cave-in, Chamber #2.” The dreaded words ripped through the miners like a chainsaw. Our Dad instantly remembered that his brother-in-law, Stanley Kulick, was working there with his buddy, Teddy. He took off for chamber #2, running as fast as he could. Dad was halfway there before realizing that he was still carrying the jackhammer he had been fixing earlier. As he approached, he saw a few other miners scrambling into the shaft while struggling to see through the clouds of dust. This was a dangerous time because it was impossible to know how much more caving was imminent. The miners slowed their pace while calling out for the men in the chamber. Soon, a choking voice was heard, hard to understand but coming nearer. Then, the light from his helmet flickered through the dusty gloom and one of the miners emerged, so covered with black and dust that Bill was not sure who it was. And then he recognized Stanley’s voice, “Teddy’s still in there. The cave was on his side.” One out, the other still unknown. More miners arrived, more lights to see with. Carefully, they advanced, calling for Teddy. No answer. More calls, still no answer. And there would not be an answer from Teddy on that Christmas Eve or any other time.

The feeling of having little control over one’s fate had to be compounded for Stanley by the fact that he and Teddy switched sides of the coal car to shovel from on this particular night. Some of the other miners questioned that choice until Stanley explained that Teddy had asked to work on the side of the car where the roof later caved in. No matter, some measure of guilt must have attached to Stanley, although he never spoke of it. It was just one more burden that these brave and stoic men were accustomed to enduring, with never a complaint.

My Uncle Stanley left the mine that night and never set foot in the mines again. He moved his family to Connecticut, the closest place to our home in Scranton, Pennsylvania, where he could find work. Stanley and his family did not move back for many years. Stanley never did return to the cold, dark, dangerous network of shafts and chambers under the valley, some only a few feet high and often with a foot of cold water.

Stanley did not return, but my Dad did and worked in the mines into 1951. I absorbed this experience without much discussion from either of our parents directly with us kids. This was a time when kids did not ask questions of their parents, especially when it was a serious matter. Much later in life, I learned more about the fear that gripped my Dad during his years as a coal miner. Mom told me how Dad hated to go to sleep at night. He knew that when he woke up, he would return to that fearful, dark place again. It never got any easier for him. But, he did it, like thousands of other men in Pennsylvania and other mining regions. He did it because it was the only way he had to take care of his wife and family. Now in my seventies, the more I reflect on those times, the more I appreciate the simple human dignity, even nobility, of these men and their wives. It was only later that they became known, also to others, as our “greatest generation.” We already knew that.

The coal mines of the Lackawanna and Susquehanna valleys are gone now. Their demise can be traced to the Knox mine disaster in January 1959. At that time, mining operations were continually being extended to chase the coal seams, but got too close to the ice-swollen Susquehanna River. The subsequent cave-in of the river through the roof of the River Slope mine flooded a major part of the interconnected mines. The flooding could not be slowed even by dumping coal cars, truckloads of gravel and fill and some eight hundred railroad cars into the whirlpool. Sixty-two fortunate miners were able to escape, but twelve more were swept away by the deluge. After more than a century of commercial coal mining, Mother Nature finally ended this period in the history of our region.

But the mines continued to deliver more pain to the decent people of this area long after they were closed. The process of separating the coal from the useless slag resulted in large dumps of waste that still contained some coal. It is believed that these dumps eventually caught fire and the fire spread by burning exposed coal near the surface and then beneath the surface. This burning emitted a foul smelling gas (hydrogen sulfide) strong enough to peel the paint from houses and making it appear that, in many places, the ground was burning. It also was responsible for the deaths of families as the gases leaked into basements at night and filled the home like a silent killer. Or the erosion collapsed the support for the structure of the house.